1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to software tools for facilitating the generation and editing of computer programs. Specifically, this invention relates to software tools for facilitating the generation and editing of an event handler program that links an event associated with one object to an action taken by another object.
2. Description of the Related Art
In current object-oriented software environments, the objects themselves include commands for triggering outside (event-handling) programs once a pre-determined event is triggered. For example, one standard event within the Microsoft Windows environment is a "mouse click" event. This. type of event is triggered whenever a user depresses a mouse button while the mouse cursor is on top of the object. As the user depresses the mouse button, an event-handling program associated with the mouse click event is triggered.
Thus, particular event-handling programs can be triggered by associating them with a pre-selected event. However, writing these event-handling programs is a complicated and time-consuming task. Normally, only computer programmers have the ability to write event-handling software. For this reason, many novice computer users cannot take advantage of this powerful technology.
One of the object-oriented technologies that takes advantage of event driven applications is Microsoft's ActiveX technology for the Internet. Users can add ActiveX components to their Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) documents so that particular events, such as a mouse click, can be used to trigger a particular event-handler. For example, an ActiveX object's mouse click event could be linked to an event handler that connects the user to another HTML document. In this manner, the ActiveX object would act like a hyperlink to other documents on the World Wide Web.
A powerful feature of current Internet technology relates to programs or scripts which run when a user selects a particular item within an HTML document. For example, a user might fill in a form on an HTML document and then depress a "submit" button to send that form to an Internet host. When the "submit" button is depressed by a mouse click, a program or script is run instructing the user's computer to gather data from the form and forward it to a pre-designated Internet site. Some scripts that are run on Internet server computers to process forms and the like are known as Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts. Other software for producing programs used on the Internet include the Visual Basic Language, Java Language, Visual Basic script an (VBScript) language from Microsoft Corporation and the JavaScript language. More information on the VBScript language can be found in Inside Microsoft Visual Basic, Scripting Edition by Scott Hillier (Microsoft Press).
Unfortunately, implementing these scripts as ActiveX event-handling programs in an HTML document can be extremely complicated and require a thorough knowledge of programming languages and environments. The VBScript and JavaScript languages require extensive programming knowledge to implement. Thus, it can be difficult for a novice computer user to create an HTML document that includes scripts and programs that provide for a flexible world-wide web site. For this reason, a simple, convenient method is needed for producing an event handler that links an event on one object in an HTML document to an action taken by a second object within the HTML document. The present invention provides such a solution.